Most professionals that work in the association industry must have come across (or heard of situations) whereby membership numbers were decreasing and there was difficulty in boosting revenue.
The number of younger people that are trooping into the workforce has skyrocketed and organizations are finding it very difficult to market their products and services against the unending supply of information that can be provided by the internet.
How can the challenge of decreasing revenue be tackled? The best approach is to go where your ideal audience is and give them the value that they need.
If you don’t have an ecommerce website yet, then your organization should consider having one. According to a report made by California University Stanislaus, online sales are expected to go beyond $1.6 trillion dollars by 2020.
So, what can you do for your organization to benefit from this figure? Highlighted below are tips that you should consider if you are planning to create an ecommerce presence for your brand:
Don’t Limit Your Sales To Only Tangible Goods
When most people think of ecommerce, all they think of are tangible goods such as accessories, clothes, hats, books etc. Although these may make sense for your organization, don’t limit your sales to them. If, after surveying the reasons why your members renew their membership, you discover that they do so because of events, seminars or continuing education resources, you can focus on selling these to non-members. By doing so, you will be able to expose non-members to the value that your organization provides. Your members will also benefit from this since they don’t have to pay for the items.
Ensure Your Design Makes Shopping Easy
Your design must be one that creates an easy shopping process. Relevant information must be prominently displayed on your website through your design. This means you shouldn’t flood your site with large text blocks, prominent calls-to-action and contradicting elements. Make good use of white space on your website. Your prospects will be able to easily find whatever they are looking for (and also buy again) when they are able to easily process the information on your website.
Give Your Customers Easy Check Out Options
Consider how Amazon makes it very easy to buy an item on their website. You should try to replicate the same experience for your site visitors. Make it quick and easy for them to move through the purchase process. You should also allow your site visitors to buy from your site without registering an account. This enables your site visitors to order for a product if they value the product more than membership. You can then serve them with engaging contents that talk about the benefits of memberships after they’ve completed their purchase.
Conclusion:
It can be a very tiring and challenging task to create and implement an ecommerce site for your organization. You need to have the right plan and design that aids the use of your site so that you can effectively create a successful niche of non-dues revenue for your brand. If you want to learn more about ecommerce best practices and ecommerce development process, don’t hesitate to contact Orange Toolz today.
